WHO doctor explains why children are not prioritised with vaccine

Health Watch

Why does the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommend at this time that vaccinating children is not a priority?
When would their
vaccination be prioritised? How is safety of these vaccines ensured? WHO’s chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan explains

The WHO is saying that vaccinating children is not a priority. Please explain why?
It is because children, though they can get infected with the Covid-19 and can transmit the infection to others, are at a much lower risk of getting severe disease compared to older adults.
That is why when we started prioritising people who should get the vaccination when there are limited supplies of vaccines available in the country, we recommend that we start with health workers and frontline workers who are at very high risk of exposure to the infection.
Also, the elderly, the people who have underlying illnesses that make them at high risk to develop severe disease should be protected first because we want to reduce the death rates that we are seeing today globally and then gradually come down age-wise in the population till we get to children.
Again, while there may be some children who are at higher risk of getting the severe disease because of some underlying illnesses or
vulnerabilities or comorbidities, they could be prioritised for
vaccines when they become available.
But children, as a group, form a much lower priority group.

In future then, would the WHO be recommending or looking at recommending vaccination for children? And when do we expect that?
Most vaccine companies and developers are currently doing studies in children, starting with 12 to 18 year old children and then progressively going down to younger and younger age groups.
As that scientific data comes out of the studies, the strategic advisory group of experts (Sage) on immunisation then develops vaccination policy for the WHO, which is then adopted by many countries.
The Sage will look at this data as it comes and make recommendations on how the vaccine should be used in children, at what dosage, what interval and others, whether there are any safety precautions or contraindications, all of that will be provided in detail.
But again, except for very few children who are at a high risk, they are not considered to be a high priority right now because we have limited doses of vaccines and we need to use them to protect the most vulnerable.
And also, we have to remember that it’s not necessary that children must get the vaccine before they can go back to school.
We’ve seen in many countries that schools have been kept open very successfully.
As long as the adults who are working in the school environment are vaccinated and adults in the community are getting the vaccine so that infection rates start dropping and by following the other public health measures for school safety, schools should be able to reopen safely.

How will we ensure safety of these vaccines?
WHO places a lot of importance on the safety of vaccines and, in fact, we have a group called the global advisory committee on vaccine safety.
These are experts from all over the world who meet regularly and advise WHO periodically, monitoring the safety signals from vaccines that are being used around the world and advising WHO if they want to make any specific recommendations.
These vaccines are first put through clinical trials to assess the safety and efficacy.
The same thing is happening in children now.
All of these vaccines are undergoing testing in children to make sure that they are safe as well as effective and establish the dose at which they should be used.